CHUNKING NAHWU AS A COGNITIVE-SYNTACTIC APPROACH: A Qualitative Case Study of Arabic Text Processing among Indonesian Students
Abstract
Reading unvowelled Arabic texts remains challenging for many Arabic Language Education students due to difficulties in recognizing syntactic relationships and managing cognitive demands during sentence interpretation. This study examines Chunking Nahwu as a cognitive-syntactic approach for supporting students’ syntactic processing and Arabic text comprehension. Employing a qualitative case study design, the study involved 22 undergraduate students enrolled in a nahwu course at the State Islamic Institute of Kerinci, Indonesia. Data were collected through classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and analysis of students’ syntactic annotations and learning artifacts. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis with iterative coding and source triangulation. The findings reveal three main patterns. First, Chunking Nahwu supported students in organizing syntactic information by recognizing grammatical relationships as interconnected units rather than isolated lexical elements. Second, syntactic chunking facilitated more integrated reading practices through phrase and clause segmentation and the connection between syntactic structures and meaning. Third, it encouraged metacognitive self-monitoring through grammatical evaluation and revision of syntactic interpretations. This study contributes to Arabic language pedagogy by extending chunking theory from information organization toward syntactic meaning construction, positioning Chunking Nahwu as a cognitive-syntactic approach that connects Arabic grammatical analysis with contemporary perspectives on language processing.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.30821/miqot.v50i2.1705
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